From Fashion Intern to Industrial Powerhouse - Lucy Woodhead on Tech and Manufacturing

Lucy Woodhead did an unpaid internship in fashion, got told by her father that he would not be funding a glamorous lifestyle, and ended up in the drain cleaning business. Thirteen years later she is VP of Operations at US Jetting, a family manufacturer her father founded in 1991 that now sells high-pressure water jetting equipment into 45 countries. In this episode she talks to Rob Woodhead about modernising a second-generation industrial business: why the old website was quietly costing them sales, what happens when your customers genuinely do not know which part they need, and the three very different people who might be placing an order. She is also refreshingly honest about AI, which is to say she has a subscription, an interest, and no idea yet what to do with it.

Key takeaways

• Starting a business and growing one require different skill sets, and the founder who was good at the first is often uncomfortable with the second.
• In technical product categories, the person placing the order is frequently not the person who will use the product, so the website has to work for both.
• An ecommerce site for specialist equipment fails at the point where a customer cannot identify what they already own.
• Being able to edit your own site without going through an agency changes behaviour more than any single feature, because it removes the cost of trying things.
• Some products should deliberately not be purchasable online when the wrong purchase damages a twenty-year customer relationship.
• Small businesses adopting AI struggle less with the technology than with identifying which problem to point it at.
• Process only holds if enough of the team believes in it, because a process nobody trusts is one nobody follows.

Episode chapters

• 00:31  Introducing Lucy Woodhead and US Jetting
• 01:50  From a fashion degree to the family business
• 04:51  Finding operations in the warehouse
• 06:28  Why starting and growing a business need different skills
• 08:06  Applying an operations lens to sales and marketing
• 09:53  What industrial jetting equipment actually does
• 12:01  Who buys it, from plumbers to the Navy
• 13:17  Why US Jetting rebuilt its website
• 14:18  The three types of customer placing an order
• 18:23  Why the machines are not sold online
• 19:53  Hot water, cold water, and guiding customers away from what they asked for
• 22:36  Results since the new site launched
• 25:27  What changed in how the team thinks about technology
• 30:18  Where AI fits, and where it does not yet
• 34:45  Video content, sustainable growth and staying small on purpose
• 37:29  Finding mentorship outside your own business

Why did US Jetting rebuild its website?

Two reasons, and only one of them was about how the site looked.

The first was control. Under the previous arrangement, changing a price meant sending an email and waiting. So did adding a photo. When every small edit has a cost in time and goodwill, the site stops being updated, and a manufacturer’s catalogue that nobody updates gradually stops matching reality.

The second was more expensive and less visible. Customers were ordering the wrong parts. Not occasionally, but often enough that the team was phoning after online orders to check whether the customer had actually bought something compatible with the machine they owned. The sales team could catch this on a call by asking a couple of questions. The website could not ask anything, so it just took the order.

That is a specific failure and it needs a specific fix. The rebuild focused on getting customers to the correct product through machine profiles and guided selection, rather than on presenting the catalogue more attractively.

You can see more of the products we have built or read about how we approach this kind of work.

Who actually places the order for technical equipment?

Three quite different people, according to Lucy, and a site built for one of them will fail the other two.

The first is the experienced older customer who knows the equipment thoroughly and would rather phone. He is not hostile to the website, he simply has a faster route. The site’s job is to be easy enough that he might use it anyway.

The second is the receptionist or administrator placing an order on someone else’s behalf. She may know exactly what she was told to buy and nothing at all about what it does. Lucy’s comparison is being sent to a hardware shop for screws and finding a wall of two thousand options.

The third is a younger team member who is entirely comfortable online but has the same knowledge gap as the second. Fluency with websites is not the same as fluency with jetting equipment.

Mapping these before building anything is the part Lucy singles out as most useful, and she is candid that US Jetting had not done it. They knew the customers existed. They had never tried to navigate their own site as each of them in turn.

Why are some products deliberately not sold online?

Because the wrong purchase costs more than the sale is worth.

The jetting machines themselves are listed for information but not available to buy with a click. Lucy’s reasoning is about the length of the relationship rather than the size of the transaction. A well-maintained machine lasts twenty years or more, which means the customer is yours for twenty years if the purchase was right, and lost immediately if it was not.

She gives an example. Customers regularly ask for hot water jetters, assuming grease behaves the way it does in a kitchen sink. The industry standard is cold, because hot water melts grease which then reforms further down the pipe, while cold water breaks it into pieces that flow away. A checkout cannot have that conversation. A salesperson can, and will sometimes offer to bring a machine and demonstrate it.

The wider principle applies well beyond industrial equipment: automate the transactions where being wrong is cheap, and keep a human in the ones where it is not.

What changes when a business can edit its own site?

Behaviour, mostly. Lucy describes logging in every day for the first few weeks purely because she could change things: a price, an image, a video. None of those individually matter. What matters is that experimenting stopped costing anything.

The measurable results were early but positive, with online leads up despite launching into what is normally a slow summer season. The change she rates more highly is visibility, being able to see what is working and adjust without a queue.

Buy-in across the team turned out to be easy for the same reason, and four or five people across sales and operations now edit the site. Lucy’s broader view on process is that it only survives if enough people believe in it, because a process nobody trusts is a process nobody follows.

Where does AI fit in a traditional manufacturing business?

Nowhere yet, and Lucy is straightforward about that.

She is interested, has a ChatGPT subscription, and can name obvious candidates like meeting transcription and task assignment. What she does not have is a way to work out which problems in her business are AI-shaped. Her phrasing is that you almost want to ask ChatGPT how you should be using ChatGPT.

This is a more common position than the discourse suggests. The barrier is not scepticism or capability, it is that identifying the right use case requires time that an operations lead does not have, and the market answers with more subscriptions rather than fewer. Lucy’s worry is ending up with ten of them and no measurable return.

It matters in her context too. US Jetting’s machines are assembled by people, not robots, which makes the obvious industrial AI narratives a poor fit.

If you are in the same position, our Vibe Code Audit and wider consulting work start from the same place: what is the problem, before what is the tool.

How does a small business choose a technology partner?

Largely on whether the answers sound too easy.

Lucy’s account of contacting website companies is that the fluent yes was the thing that worried her. If she described something complicated and got an immediate assurance it was no problem, she assumed she had not been understood. What built confidence was being asked a lot of questions about how the thing would actually work.

There is also a running problem she describes that most small businesses will recognise: the steady flow of cold emails promising to transform search rankings, none of which anyone in the business can evaluate. Her father forwards them. The value of a technology partner turns out to include telling a client which offers are worth taking seriously, sometimes at nine o’clock at night.

Read more about how Old St Labs works with clients.

About the guest

Lucy Woodhead is VP of Operations at US Jetting, a family-owned manufacturer of high-pressure water jetting equipment founded in 1991 and now selling into 45 countries. She joined the business after an unintended detour through a fashion merchandising degree, has been there thirteen years, and holds an MBA. She works alongside her sister in the second generation of the business.

About the host

Rob Woodhead is a co-founder of Old St Labs, a London-based software agency building web and mobile products for startups and innovators. He and Lucy are cousins, and US Jetting is an Old St Labs client, both of which they discuss openly on the recording.

Frequently asked questions

What does US Jetting make?

US Jetting manufactures high-pressure water jetting equipment used to clean drains and pipes, along with the nozzles and aftermarket parts that keep the machines running. Customers include plumbers, municipalities, industrial farms and military organisations across 45 countries.

Should specialist equipment be sold through an ecommerce site?

Parts and consumables usually should. Large capital equipment often should not, particularly where a wrong purchase damages a long customer relationship. US Jetting lists its machines for information but handles those sales through conversation.

Why do customers order the wrong parts online?

Because they often cannot identify the model they already own. A salesperson resolves this by asking questions. A website has to do the same work through machine profiles, guided selection and clear model identification.

How should a small business start using AI?

By identifying a specific problem before choosing a tool. Lucy Woodhead’s experience is that the hard part is not learning the technology but working out which parts of the business it should be pointed at, and avoiding accumulating subscriptions with no measurable return.

Do you need hot water for drain jetting?

Usually not. The industry standard is cold water, because hot water melts grease which then reforms further down the pipe, whereas cold water breaks it into smaller pieces that flow away.

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